


A Recruitment AU

by brightephemera



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grey Wardens, Recruitment, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29880819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: This story is an AU for my Leif Surana, it did not happen! I just wondered…there’s more than one canonical Grey Warden recruiter in Ferelden. Here, Blackwall is not the one who finds our famous recruit. Angst ahoy.
Kudos: 2





	A Recruitment AU

Thom Rainier, alias Edwith Devers, looked up from his mug and his memories when the armored man jingled in followed by two vastly less interesting men in padded gear.

The armored man was tall, if not very broad at the shoulder. His plate was plain but well-made, visibly repaired in one or two places. Here was a man who lived by the sword. Edwith tensed. There was no reason he should expect a fight with this stranger, but in his ill-fitting leathers he felt himself at a disadvantage. His own sword was the only quality thing about him.

He returned his stare to the table, where it had been all day. Not that there was anything interesting there. There was only the empty feeling of freedom bought with the wrong currency.

The armored man went to the bar. Edwith felt it when he looked his way. Great, the innkeep was probably telling him how Edwith had spent the last three weeks marinating himself in the corner. Edwith felt like some level of alcohol purchase should exempt him from such questions. Ah, but the armored man was dropping coin, too.

There. Step, step, stop. “I’m going to ask you a question,” the stranger said in a harsh, wandering voice. “Are you in need of permanent employment?”

“Doing what, then?” He used his thickest Fereldan accent. It didn’t make anyone swoon or anything but it made him feel safer. The crimes of the Orlesian Thom Rainier were that much more distant.

“The usual,” said the stranger. “Challenge. Adventure. Defending the world from horrors beyond imagining.”

“If you want to fun me get in line,” he growled.

“I’m looking for Grey Wardens. We provide your keep and training, and you hone yourself against darkspawn. You’ve the look of a fighter about you. The Wardens can use that.”

What did he fight these days except regret and a persistent headache? “The Wardens ended the Blight.”

“That’s so.”

“So where are you finding darkspawn?”

“You could find out. The country was reduced to two Wardens. We want more.”

“And I’ve the look of darkspawn feed, no doubt. So which one are you, the mage or the King?”

The stranger stooped a tiny bit and narrowed his eyes. His was a strained face, marked by age and by other worries. “My name is Loghain.”

Rumor sprang to the fore. Edwith’s mouth went dry. “Loghain Mac Tir?”

“The same.”

“You became a Warden?”

“Why, what did you hear?”

“That the Warden-Commander seared you to your skull at a Landsmeet.”

His bloodless mouth stretched. “She did try. No. She recruited me once she’d finished inflicting bodily harm. And I, in turn, recruit men and women from across Ferelden to keep the true fight going.”

“The fight against half the arls and banns in the country?”

He didn’t take the bait. “The civil war was mended. Ferelden is at peace, or sufficiently so to keep me from further meddling. We work primarily in the Deep Roads these days, striking darkspawn at the source.”

“And you want me to join you.”

“It isn’t for everyone. It’s a life of purpose, and danger. It severs you from your past, and it lets you grasp a future. A Warden has brothers and sisters sworn, no matter how far they stray.” His cold blue eyes narrowed. “Do you think you’re up to it?”

In truth, ‘severs you from your past’ was enough. They said good things about Wardens. “I might be, then. Which way are you bound?”

“Amaranthine, cross country. Now if you’ll put aside that ale I’ll believe you. We can stay here tonight.”

The other two approached. “My name is Beyte,” said the first recruit. He was a short, heavyset human youth. “Sleep in a bed! I love your town.”

A yellow-haired dwarf followed. “Murn,” he said. “Sleep now.”

Loghain watched them go, then turned to Edwith with a completely neutral expression. “You’ll have time for questions before we reach Amaranthine. Anything immediate?”

Edwith thought about it. Bed sounded really good. “When do we wake?”

“Sunrise.” He spared the barest glance for the stains on the table at Edwith’s place. “Manageable?”

“Aye.” He was a drunkard, not a layabout.

He paused in the stairway, prompted by something he couldn’t name. Loghain disappeared to the kitchen and came back with half a chicken and a tall mug. He sat at a bare table and ate with brisk, businesslike motions. He looked at his food like it was the sole subject in the world. His meal was unselfconsciously solitary. Edwith remembered that for a long time.

*

True to his word, Loghain Mac Tir was in the common room at the instant of the sun’s first ray. Edwith had beaten him by ten minutes. He didn’t want to miss anything.

Murn came down just behind Loghain. He went to look for breakfast while Loghain and Edwith waited for Beyte.

“Do you wish to be a Warden today?” Loghain said.

“I don’t see why not,” said Edwith. “I’ve got nothing else.”

“You’ll have something. I promise you that.”

Unprompted they both started toward the stairs. Edwith stopped, embarrassed. Usually when one of his men slept in he went upstairs to pump some water to pour on the man’s face. However, he was not in command here, and Warden Loghain didn’t need to know his habits. “Go on,” he said. Beyte needed waking, water or no.

It wasn’t half a minute before Beyte trudged down the stairs. His face was dripping. Loghain came behind him with a perfectly straight face. “Murn?”

The dwarf emerged from the kitchen. “Cold chicken, ser, and ale.”

“Let’s have it.” Loghain hefted a purse and counted out a decent payment. “We march in half an hour.”

This inn where Thom Rainier had been drowning his sorrows was a building made with more ambition than realism; it was twice the size that the little lumber-built village needed. Here was one of dozens of tiny hamlets scattered across the most remote bannorns of Ferelden. In wandering through this countryside he worked a few days on and off, like he always did, but he never integrated. Men like him didn’t get to fit in.

They struck west.

The land was mostly forested; even the clearings were scrubby. They paused by a stream to rest feet. Loghain pulled Beyte aside for quiet words. Edwith found himself facing the dwarf Murn.

“And what’s your story?” he said. The more he turned the conversation on the man, the less he had to talk about himself. Reciprocity was out of the question.

“I’m a merchant,” Murn said promptly. “Or I was. I managed some matters for the carta. A mistake, but the kind of mistake where you didn’t have a choice. When I wanted to go…being a surfacer wasn’t really enough separation.” He shuddered. “I’m still better with a ledger than a sword.”

“You’ll need to learn to be a Grey Warden.” It felt good to be sure of something. Sure of something new. “Here, find a stick, arms’ length, no branches.” He took his own advice and broke off a piece of fallen brush while the dwarf hefted his newfound stick. “Now. You can’t do a damned thing if you’re on the ground. Set your feet and don’t lose track of them. Come toward me.”

Murn plodded. “Like this?”

“You can lean into it, but don’t forget your base. See how I’m coming up to guard. Come in and swing at me. Not a tap, a swing.” He blocked the result easily. “Good. Follow through on it. Force me out of my comfort. Again. Good.” He wished he had practice blades with proper hilts. “Swords are straightforward to counter. You’ll have to ask our Loghain whether darkspawn use them.”

As if summoned, Loghain appeared at Thom’s elbow. “Well said. Expect spears and swords, mostly.” His gaze frankly appraised.

Damn it, damn it, damn it. “I’ve had my time as a guard.”

Something was happening in Loghain’s pitiless eyes. He knew Thom was lying, or at least holding back. For some reason, he didn’t demand the details.

They moved on.

In late afternoon they paused again. Loghain broke out some dried meat and the party chewed it thoughtfully.

“You’ve hefted a weapon,” he said to Murn. “Still interested?”

“I need to learn more.”

“A fine attitude. Apropos of nothing, I want to make one thing clear.” He leaned back and frowned. “A Warden is beyond past legal considerations in any jurisdiction subject to our treaties. It wipes a criminal record. It demands that all considerations be derived from the present. And it will defend its own, if necessary, against any comers. When you join, your life, and your death, are sworn to us.”

Good and good. “You make an effective pitch,” said Edwith. “If rather bleak.”

Loghain smiled mirthlessly. “I have yet to find the man with a worse record than mine, going into this endeavor.”

Children screaming, looking at Thom like he might help, not understanding that the men with bare swords were acting on his order. “No,” said Edwith. “I never started a war.” Just some tiny murders. And, when the fight he’d started was done, he’d had the luxury of disappearing. “Were you a soldier before all of this? You must have been.”

“I was a general at twenty,” said Loghain. “Maric found my counsel useful.”

“Could you carry that many lives that young?”

“I’ve come to believe that anyone who can do it at forty could do it at fifteen. Some things you’re born with.”

Had Thom Rainier been that hard, ever? Or had he passed one landmark soft and the other broken? “Surely, relative to a new recruit…did you not want to be Warden-Commander once the Blight ended?”

Loghain looked up sharply. “I disqualified myself when I ordered the death of every Warden left in Ferelden.”

“And that’s why you’re at the arse end of nowhere recruiting merchants.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” He seemed to find it funny. “I will return to Amaranthine with you. I will spend time with my brethren, and my commander. Then I’ll go back out to this work. The way I was always meant to. Finding replacements for the lives I squandered. Regardless, we should move on.”

Late that day they crested a hill. Beyond lay a farmstead: a house, a field, and a fenced paddock. No population center but they might get directions to someplace more fertile. They descended into the forest and came out near the house.

There was an indifferently stacked pile of wood. There was a stump. There was a woman placing a log segment on the stump and swinging an axe down on it. It bounced off the surface and scraped the log’s edge. The woman grimaced and tried again. This time she got halfway down the center. She didn’t have the muscle for this job. She scarcely had the will.

Loghain took the lead. “Good morrow, madam.”

She looked up. Her eyes were a furious dark blue. “That so,” she said.

“We’re recruiting for the Grey Wardens,” he said, keeping his hands still where she could see them.

“I’ll go,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“I’ll go. Now’s good.”

“Wait,” said Edwith, thinking about what a woman might flee toward or from. “Are there children in there?”

She looked grim. “Not for a long time.”

“You’ll need to fight,” said Loghain.

“That’s naught new. Are you going now?”

“Have a heart,” cried Murn. “What’s so terrible that you would come like that?”

Loghain drew his longsword. The woman yelped and scurried to the nearest tree, then cowered against it.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I want you to lift this sword.”

“S-ser?”

He came to her and helped her wrap one grimy hand, then the other, around the sword’s grip. The tip fell like an anvil as soon as Loghain let go. He stepped back and took his shield. “Raise it like you mean to harm me.”

She planted a firmer stance and eyed him. “I don’t know you, ser.”

“I could tell you if that makes it easier. Come. Bring up the blade.”

She set her hands firmly. Her shoulders came up and Edwith cringed. Straining small muscles was the mark of an amateur. Loghain watched impassively. The griffons on his shield were of plain enamel, frequently hit. The girl strained. For a moment the tableau didn’t move.

She grunted and bent her knees and kept pulling. The sword levered off the ground, tip still firmly planted. With a titanic effort she tensed head to heel and the sword’s tip wavered up into the air.

“Come here,” Loghain said calmly.

She tottered, tilted, and ran, pointing the longsword directly at the center of Loghain’s shield. The snarl on her face suggested that she wasn’t really aiming for Loghain or his shield. He took the weak blow and turned it aside.

“I’ve seen worse,” he said gruffly, studying her. “What’s your name?”

She planted the sword in the ground and leaned hard on the pommel. “Amalysse, ser.”

“Amalysse. Do you think you can learn to do that any time it’s called for?”

Her chin came up sharply. “I could, ser.”

“Four recruits,” said Loghain, taking his weapon back. “We should get to Amaranthine before the sheer length of your tour makes you forget what you signed up for.”

She plunged into the forest – due north, Edwith noted. He and the others followed. Once safe in the woods he heard someone behind them, banging out the door, yelling. The woman ahead ran. Well, he had nothing to do but follow.

At camp that night Beyte offered Amalysse his bedroll without him in it. Edwith knelt by her while she stared at the fire. “This is for you,” he said, offering his utility dagger. “It’ll do you better until after you’ve had some exercise.”

Her eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Thank you,” she whispered, and gripped the handle. “I know what to do with knives.”

“Somehow,” he said, “I thought you might.”

He went to lie on his side, curled around his pack. There were some things you could count on a crowd of strangers to try, and theft was one of them. He didn’t think, except about the chipped griffon on a field of steel, and gratitude in dark blue eyes.

*

Up at sunrise. In motion Loghain limited himself to short orders. He kept up a brisk pace and watched their surroundings in almost all directions. He didn’t look back.

He called a halt by a creek’s modest bridge while the sun was yet just halfway to its peak. “Fill your skins,” he said brusquely. Amalysse, take this.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the waterskin and looking at the ground.

“Fifteen minutes,” he continued, and sat down. Everyone else scattered for the necessaries and came back together.

Loghain looked at them all. “This land was damaged during the Blight. You’ll learn the look of it. The darkspawn you may meet on the surface are scattered, disorganized. Still deadly. Their true resurgence is under the command of an archdemon.”

“And when does that happen?” quavered Beyte.

“When the darkspawn find an old god in the deeps below the Deep Roads.” Loghain shook his head. “Likely not again in our lifetimes, but I cannot guarantee that. No Warden living, nor anyone else, can guarantee that.”

“You make it sound so attractive,” Murn said glumly.

“Can Wardens see when the darkspawn gather?” said Beyte.

“No.” There was something there, a pause. “None of us can decipher when they gather in the Deep Roads. You will learn the details. For now, we should move.”

That night Beyte began. “Why?”

Loghain eyed him. “Why what?”

Beyte’s eyes glittered in the firelight. “Why did you agree to it?”

“To what?”

“Who recruited you?” said Amalysse.

“Warden-Commander Leif did. She wasn’t the Commander then. She came after me. I had abandoned some of her comrades and ordered the rest killed. Gotten her best friend executed as an assassin, which I maintain was his own fool fault. Sanctioned the destruction of her Circle. Started selling the weakest of her race into slavery. Denounced her at the Landsmeet as an Orlesian sympathizer and would-be tyrant.” Come to think of it, that list was pretty damning. “In response, she never asked much. Just my body and soul.” He tossed a twig into the fire and they all smelled the change in smoke. “And I gave it. Ferelden needed it.”

“Was it hard?” said Amalysse. “Becoming one.”

“There is a ritual called the Joining. Should you choose the burden of the Warden, as I believe you can bear, then you will discover what the Joining entails and what it confers.”

“That’s back-asswards,” said Beyte. “Shouldn’t we know what we’re getting into?”

“Stopping the darkspawn. The original Wardens had no further requirements. Having seen a Blight myself, I don’t see that any others are called for.”

Memories tore at Edwith again that night. The children, the screaming wife, and he had decided his target was just that important. It was the worst order of his life. Maybe starting a life under the guidance of a commander would help. Or maybe he could learn to do better on his own account.

In the morning he fell in beside Loghain. “A word?”

“I cannot tell you more about the Joining.”

“No. Just some experience beforehand.”

“Go on.”

“If nobody ever knew the things you said last night. Would you still try to make up for them?”

“I can’t know the answer to that question. The entire country and half a dozen others know.”

“Aye, but did you repent faster than they could condemn?”

“I became a Warden. I joined the people I unjustly ordered killed to rebuild a country with assistance I very famously bear no love for. How much more elaborate do you want my atonement to be?”

The children had died screaming. A saturated miniature of a war, that assassination. Nobody knew it was him but him. And yet, he needed his own atonement, elaborate or otherwise.

Murn replaced Loghain in time. “So,” he said. “What’s he holding back?”

“I don’t know, but it worked for the mage and the king. Don’t dwarves know all about darkspawn?”

“The warrior caste does all that.”

Edwith’s mouth twisted. “The warrior caste and you now.”

“I suppose.”

The chatter at the break was insignificant, but for one thing. Beyte asked what could justify all that secrecy. Loghain just nodded. “I believe it’s the one noble cause that will not ever change for time nor circumstance. The world is here. The darkspawn threaten it. I find that clarity refreshing.”

Thoughts tumbled through Edwith’s head when they walked. Was this Loghain a representative Warden? If so, they had an acceptance that might just be tolerable. If they wanted his skills and not his story…that was perfect. And if on top of this they genuinely helped people? They had him.

Stopping darkspawn sounded nice, too. He had been a common guardsman during the Fifth Blight. It hadn’t affected a damn thing except to make his masters nervous. It was hard to believe that the darkspawn could threaten the world…but the archdemon was undeniable, and maybe they would have to do that again.

That crisp evening at the fireside Loghain told stories of the Wardens of the past and their fights against the Blight. Edwith surprised himself by telling an old folk tale about Warden heroism. He had forgotten it until that moment. Loghain accepted the words about griffons along with everything else. So the evening went, quiet, as everyone seemed to wonder what it meant to join those heroes.

He woke to the smell of rain in evergreens. The rainfall was upon him before he got to his feet. He packed up and joined Loghain and the others under thick forest cover.

Loghain just started talking as soon as Edwith got there. “There’s a hunting lodge just north of here across the old field. It will do for rest and shelter. Just stay close to me until we get there.”

They left the forest and stared across thick grass. It was shortly obvious to Edwith that the “old field” was not just a farmer’s lot gone to seed. Scattered among the clumps of uncut grass there were lumps and edges, the kind of things left on battlefields when the stuff of good make had been stripped.

“How long ago was this fight?” he said, hurrying up to Loghain’s side.

“Seven years, give or take a week.” He looked around. “This battle was catastrophic. I expected twenty percent losses given the difficulties…I lost ninety. Strangely, so did the other side. There was no clear report why. Keep up with me. Watch for openings in the ground.”

“What for?” said Murn.

“Anything that can account for seventy percent.”

Armor and rain notwithstanding, Loghain moved at a trot. His head moved to and fro as he scanned the landscape. Something here made him more nervous than anything Edwith had seen to date.

What he didn’t expect was three tall figures at once, racing out from under the forest to one side.

“Form up,” Loghain shouted into the rain, and equipped the helmet that had ridden at his side all this way. “Edwith, beside me. Mind Amalysse. Murn, Beyte, stay close to me and strike where you can. Darkspawn armor is shit, but you have to mean it when you strike. Look sharp.”

Amalysse half crouched, her borrowed dagger gripped tight. “When I hit something,” said Edwith, “you take whatever strike opens itself. Do not step away from where you are. Clear?”

“Clear.”

The things came closer. They were indeed in a patchwork of armor, with frills and crests on their ill-fitting helmets. They carried swords. Good. He was good at swords.

You learned things fighting alongside someone. Loghain Mac Tir was a man who left his regrets at the battlefield’s edge. He was pure, cold motion. So there was a use for that among Wardens. Edwith raised his buckler to form what would pass for a shield wall.

Thom Rainier made the most of his soldier’s training. He shifted only enough to keep between Amalysse and the darkspawn. He swung and found that a darkspawn neck was very much like a human one.

Blood streaming, a family crying out.

“Murn, Beyte, behind you,” shouted Loghain without even looking back. That would have to be explained.

Amalysse stabbed between Edwith’s feet at the foot of the nearest darkspawn. The monster yelped and went down. “Good,” he barked, and kept swinging.

There were more now. Six or seven. One charged him and twisted around his sword. It gripped his leather collar and hauled him in. Edwith tucked in his chin and headbutted the thing, close enough to inhale its stench. It reeled back. There was one on his side and he dispatched it. This time he did not have any extra assistance. He was missing something from the corner of his eye.

“Amalysse!” She was on the ground next to the dead darkspawn.

She did not take her hand away from her slashed abdomen. The blood simply poured over the exposed flesh.

“Keep pressure on it,” he said pointlessly. She would be dead within minutes.

She grimaced at him. “’d rather die like this than live the shit I came from.”

“You speak for us all.”

“Shame we never got the time.”

“I can stay here.”

“No, you can’t. Kill ‘em all. Maybe I’ll see you after.”

Doubtful. He turned, searching for a point of focus. Murn and Beyte were on the ground. He could only help by killing the things that had put them there.

And he got one. The darkspawn hanging several paces away was huge, and it was bellowing instead of fighting. Cheerleader or commander, either way, Edwith wanted it down. He charged alongside Loghain. They swung in near unison, hacking their way to the alpha monster and inflicting parallel slashes across its wasted chest. Then they turned and cleaned up the sole darkspawn who had not started fleeing for their miserable caves.

Loghain took off his helmet. “You don’t seem much disturbed,” he said. His tone was totally neutral.

“You see one bastard, you’ve seen ‘em all,” said Edwith.

That got a smile. Right until a darkspawn spear erupted above Loghain’s collarbone.

He dropped. Edwith dispatched the resurgent darkspawn, too late. “Hold,” Loghain said thickly. “Bastards couldn’t…get me in the Blight. If…at first you don’t succeed, bury your dead and…prepare the next ambush.”

Only they two were left.“I could get up in the hills. Find a healer.”

His breaths came hard and urgent. “Listen to me. Take my badge. Return to Amaranthine. The Commander will want to know…what happened. Tell her…tell her I hope I’ve tipped the balance. She will understand.”

That was all he had. He fell away.

Edwith made a circuit of the battlefield. He cut darkspawn throats and checked pulses of his friends. Friends? Fellow Wardens? Strangers of three nights’ acquaintance.

They were dead. They were all dead.

Edwith made a resolution then. The next time, he wouldn’t lose them. There would be a next time. A next contest. A sword swing without guilt. A use for him, after all this time. Loghain had had every element of a life that could make Edwith happy.

His last request, though, that was a problem. If he took Loghain’s possessions to present to the Warden-Commander, and said he had tragically been unable to help? What were the odds she forgave that? Edwith had been a murderer once and it had destroyed his life. What would she do if he were accused again?

He took the badge from under the dead man’s collar. He couldn’t be Loghain Mac Tir, but if a Warden still sent reports from the far reaches of Ferelden, would anyone care that the locals met a man in a concealing beard who could express the regrets of a commander and the hope of a convert?

He dug graves. They’d died Wardens, all of them. Tomorrow, maybe, he would find a recruit and teach them something of what he’d learned.

A new life. Still furtive in its way, but it would be worth something. Wardens meant something, and always had. A simple life. Doing some good and not doing it for coin. He surveyed the battlefield and wished not for the first time that he could do it all over. But he moved past that. Somewhere nearby must be a town, and in that town, perhaps, one or two who wanted to be heroes.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N. Leif knows. Leif cares. This timeline collapses because Leif, Loghain's best friend, comes to kick Thom Rainier’s ass.


End file.
